Tuesday, October 9, 2007

San Francisco

Long time no post. I've been here in San Francisco a little more than a month now, living in a little Studio apartment in the South of Market district.

San Francisco is a lovely city in a lot of ways. I just happen to live in the ugly part. No, really, it's actually not that bad. It's actually been good for me. I've always been kind of a coddled middle-class white boy, so being thrust in the middle of what someone has referred to as one of the few "bad" parts of San Francisco has been enlightening. A few things I've learned:

1) Just because it's a poorer neighborhood, doesn't mean someone's going to jump out of the shadows and kill you for your iPod.

2)This is San Francisco. The bad neighborhood is two blocks away from the really good neighborhood.

3)Homeless people are not scary. They're tired and hungry. Sometimes strung out.

4)Just because a street is unclean doesn't mean it's unsafe.

5)The open-air market at the UN Plaza on Sundays is a great place to buy nectarines.

6)I've rediscovered how much I love going to the library. Especially since there's a really big one near me.

7)Being able to walk to work is unbelievably awesome. I walk to work ten minutes every day.

8)It's only warm when it's sunny, and only cold when it's windy.

9)You can open your windows in San Francisco without letting in a million bugs. Take that, Atlanta!

10)Not having a car in a major city isn't that bad. Until you need something specific.

11)Two movie theaters right across the street from each other isn't a joke. It's a temptation.

The biggest change isn't that it's San Francisco...but that I'm living in the heart of a major city. It's always bustling and busy. Loud. About ten percent of everyone you see has something wrong with them, but then you realize that's up to par with the percentages...you're just seeing a lot more people at once.

And the city really is beautiful. When it's a sunny, warm day walking down the street I'll pass a beautiful little park with a waterfall behind the Metreon on the way to work. The breeze will stir just right, the sun will hit my face and I'll think "Here I am." And that's nice.

The job's going well, too, hopefully I'll have more to share on that later. I miss my wife a lot, but she's coming to visit in four days, so that's be great. I hope she learns to like San Francisco as well. Right now I've been writing this to try to get out of writing the chapter of a game writing book I've been assigned, but I guess I'd better get to it.